Tags in control files

[Enrico Zini]

Hello,

debtags tracks tags by package name, regardless of package version. That
is generally fine, except when packages get renamed, and we are using
the same set of tags for all releases (stable, testing and unstable).
Think git and chromium, for example.

Seemingly unrelated, some maintainers have asked me for a way to say
"tags on this package are final, please don't change them anymore".

A way to solve both problems is this: allow a maintainer to add a "Tag"
header in debian/control for some binary packages. If the Tag header
exists, that is authoritative; otherwise, the overrides are used.

By default, people would NOT add Tag headers to their debian/control.
However, if one wishes to have different tags for different versions of
a package, or if one prefers to have the tags of some of their packages
maintained over the BTS instead of the debtags.debian.net workflow, then
they are free to choose to do so.

AFAICT, however, this needs coordination with ftp-master. At the moment,
unless I am mistaken, the overrides I provide would overwrite a Tag:
header from debian/control, but what I'm looking for is to have the Tag:
header have priority over the overrides.

I could drop the overrides for packages that have tags in
debian/control, but that would mean dropping the overrides for any
version of the package, including old ones which instead would benefit
from the overrides.

Alternatively I could import tags from control files into the overrides,
but that would mean that the tags from one version of the package are
still used for all versions of it.

Are there other options? Could the Tag: header be marked as something
where package control files have priority over the overrides?


Ciao,

Enrico

-- 
GPG key: 4096R/E7AD5568 2009-05-08 Enrico Zini <enrico at enricozini.org>
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